


Caipirinha

by Tyellas



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Alcohol, Character Death, Conflict, Dark, Deception, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hints of what's to come, Identity Issues, Period-Typical Awfulness, Pre-Movie, Prostitution, Rape, References to Bestiality, Rescue, Verbal Abuse, for resilient readers, masculine competitiveness, sex tourism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:08:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: On Strickland’s last night in Brazil, before he and the Asset ship out, he needs to shed what he's been and done on this mission. A depraved night on the town should do the job – if he can forget about the Asset for five minutes.Huge thanks to beta readerVulgarweed!





	Caipirinha

**Author's Note:**

> _I've dragged that filthy thing out of the river muck in South America and all the way here - and along the way - we didn't get to like each other much._
> 
>  
> 
> A story to bring together the Strickland we glimpse in the [novel extract,](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/12/the-shape-of-waternovel-does-much-much-more-than-adapt-the-movie/) that half-feral hunter, and the rigid, boundary-obsessed officer we meet at the beginning of the movie. Something happens, along the way...  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> ...you read the warnings, right? There's a _lot_ of warnings.

In the lowest part of a low-slung boat in the deepest part of Belem’s docks, Strickland leans over dark water. He speaks to the water’s surface. “You trying to tell me something? Huh?” The murky fluid holds his prize. But he can’t see it. Nothing’s visible but ripples and a thin, slimy chain leading down. He mutters, “ _Filho de puta._ "

Behind Strickland, someone laughs, spits richly. Another man speaks, as Strickland did, in Portuguese. “Smart bugger, our _bicho_. A real Brazilian! He hates Americans.” When Strickland faces him, the man’s grinning. “Truly, he learns. Won’t surface any more if you’ve got the _bastão de gado_.”

Strickland stops tapping an electric cattle prod against one hand. Grimly, he hands the flimsy rod back to Berdugo, the old animal smuggler he’s hired to look after the…thing. The swamp monster. The Asset.

Strickland’s hired him so he doesn’t have to go near the thing any more than he has to. Somehow, he still finds himself here, watching. He’s been kicking his heels in Belem, this boring river city, for ten days. Waiting on the Navy pickup, with the old fart and the creature. He wishes to God he could’ve flown out, but no. Got to have somebody official to mind an asset like this. There's nobody else left. For a minor mission, this has had a hell of a body count. It's a good thing, Strickland thinks, he's not superstitious.

The smuggler takes back his cattle prod and winces. The skinny stick’s exposed wires are sparking, its battery casing cracked. Strickland watches out of the corner of his eye as Berdugo adjusts it. “Ow! Shitty Argentinians. They invent this, you know. First for their cattle, then their political prisoners!”

Strickland sneers. He’s certain Berdugo is lying again. One moment, the louche, greasy man boasts that he’s smuggled jaguars and caimans. The next, he’s telling tales about guiding BBC film expeditions. But the first thing he’d done, hearing Strickland's voice, had been to say, _“Americano, hiem?”_ So: hired. 

Berdugo does have an undeniable knack for wrangling the thing. But Strickland is the only one to lock and unlock the salvaged slave manacles and collar that truly hold the monster. He’s fondling the manacle keys now, by reflex, in a pocket next to his groin.

The water, below, still gives Strickland nothing but his own reflection. He sees his body down to muscle and sinew, lines on his recently shaved face carved hard, hair falling an inch past his loose collar. His mouth tightens with pride. He’d been the American this job needed, he tells himself. Not a damn Yankee. A Panhandle cracker, a back-country bad boy, ready to tail anything, fight anything, fuck anything.

He’ll rein it all in tomorrow, be Colonel Richard Strickland again. Controlled, ready for orders. He knows how to shed what he’s been and done on mission ground. Get a haircut, get back in the dress uniform, ship out anesthetized by a really solid hangover. He’ll leave behind what he’s been here: hunter and head-cutter and jungle god…

Those thoughts seem to summon it. For a moment, Strickland’s reflection has a dark shadow. The water’s surface breaks for a glimpse of an inhuman, bipedal leg, one muscular shoulder. But the thing subsides again, leaving Strickland restless. Still, it’s alive, well enough. Ready for the extraction and General Hoyt. Mission accomplished.

“Catch!” Strickland throws a flask from his pocket to Berdugo. The man fumbles it, but doesn't drop it. He opens it for a swig of Brazil’s sugarcane liquor, cachaça. Strickland, himself, slips a green candy, gone sticky in the heat, into his own mouth. Around it, he mumbles, “We’ve done good. How about I buy you a real drink? Maybe you can show me around, where the girls are…”

The rush of confidence and sugar has him in the mood to fuck himself raw. It makes sense that he’s on edge. A man has needs. This mission’s gone on so long, the tropical sun has faded his wife’s snapshot in the front of his wallet. He’s had so many men disbelieve that he’s married to _that_ , the last few times Strickland’s looked at the photo, he’s doubted it himself. Not that he’s looked much, recently, with the monster to mind.

Berdugo gets it. “Fix up your own _bastão_ , eh? Make it five or six drinks and we go. You try a caipirinha?”

“They’re the best.” For all that he hates Brazil, the humid surreality of it all, Strickland has to admit: the caipirinha is the world’s most perfect drink. It’s the alcoholic version of his favorite candy. That sugarcane liquor, more sugar, lime, and ice. The result is sweet and crunchy and tangy and hits like a brick. Even the name suits: their slang for redneck, hillbilly. Perfect for him tonight. “Let’s go.”

Walking the Belem waterfront, Strickland looks as louche as the smuggler. He’s in light colors, ivory cotton, tan linen, tobacco belt and shoes. With his original gear long rotted or shed, he lifted these from the mission’s translator. He and that translator had despised each other from the moment Strickland told him what to say to the natives. It had been a pleasure to kill the man for knowing too much. As the smuggler chomps through a bag of nuts from a street vendor, Strickland eyes him, considers how much he knows, too.

The red-light district isn’t far from the dirty docks. Places like this all feel the same. Shabby colonial buildings, cobblestones, vivid signs. Like New Orleans after training camp, or hitting Tokyo for R&R back in the Korean War. They walk by a fresh white Cadillac parked under a green and red neon sign, the powdery colored light reflecting in the car’s enamel. It’s the most beautiful thing Strickland’s seen in months.

Bar bouncers see his height and skin, send touts to try and con him inside. They can’t place him in the translator’s clothes, calling to him in French and Spanish. Strickland walks by, pretending not to understand until he’s hailed in English. Then, he relents.

Soon enough, though the _bastão’s_ been left behind, he and Berdugo are goading each other. A caipirinha in thirty seconds. Shots of straight cachaça. The first strip club. The second strip club. Its girl-and-girl show. Its girl-and-Alsatian show. Its back room bar, where, after buying wildly overpriced drinks, you can ask a girl to leave with you. 

The smuggler continues his one-upping by picking two women, veterans of the show they’ve watched. Strickland’s eye is caught by a fresher face. A rounded girl with black hair, clean locks sliding out of a high updo, pinned with too many flowers. The rest of her’s promising, too: short, tawny, curvy to overflowing above and below a nipped-in waist.

The smuggler’s pair pout. They’d shoved a brassy blonde at Strickland, not her. One of them whines, _Por que a jangada?_ _-_ why  the low-class river girl? The girl flinches, vulnerable. That settles it for Strickland. He slides an arm around her shoulder. He’s had enough liquor to feel loose and affable. “A real Brazilian. Tomorrow, I leave.”

The smuggler chortles. “You hear that, _menina_? Show him a good time!”

Strickland leans onto a bar stool, pulls the river girl onto his lap. She goes tense, first at how easily he manhandles her, then at what she feels through his linen trousers. Strickland grins, remembering what his first whore on this trip had said. _You have the face of an Englishman -  and a cock that means women will fuck you anyway._ He’d slapped the bitch for it. She’d snapped her head back and said that cost extra. It had been an interesting night. This girl turns away, too shy to say anything.

The smuggler pretty much wants it to be a five-way. He’s reeling out his stories to the girls, wildcats, caimans, BBC, blah blah. He starts on a tall tale about screwing in front of a jaguar in heat. “You look into the creature’s eyes in her cage. You feel the force of the jungle. She wants, but she cannot have, and she burns.”

Strickland’s harpooned by a wild idea, a final one-up. One that whirlpools, inevitably, around the waiting, maddening, unresponsive monster. “You girls really want to see something fierce? I caught it. He’s looking after it. You won’t believe it.” With caipirinha-blurred logic, Strickland’s certain that if he mentions it, it’s fine.

The smuggler’s immediately on board. “This _bicho_ _, minhas amigas!_ From the blackest of lagoons! He’s a hell of a fighter! Never seen anything like him.”

They’re all interested. Strickland’s girl finally dares to speak, softly. “Did you tame it?”

He gives her another squeeze. “That’s the truth, sugar. Got it on a boat, needs the water. Up for it?” She nods. One of her flowers falls away as Strickland bumps her off his lap. The smuggler’s two whores start haggling for their outcall fee immediately.

By the time they stagger out of the cab back, the smuggler’s a write-off. Can’t hold his liquor, Strickland thinks, triumphantly. The smuggler’s two girls shrug, eye Strickland warily. They’ve already seen the color of the men’s money. He sends the three of them to Berdugo’s cabin, backed by the smuggler’s drunken assent. “Come on, ay?”

Strickland’s not up for it. He’s going to put on a show himself. His arm hardens around the girl. “This way.” She looks scared of the heavies guarding the boat. Strickland has a word with one. Some more money changes hands. The heavies look away, suddenly blind.

The river girl tiptoes onto the boat warily. “The _bicho_ – sir – is it an animal or a man?” _Bicho_ is vague. As Strickland understands it, the word swims between languages, Spanish and Portuguese, between meanings: a critter-type animal or a range of humans.  

Strickland says, “Walk. You’ll see.” This is a riverboat: the cabins, enough for ten, are above the waterline. He gives the girl a decided shove towards a dark door, opening on a ladder.

The ladder leads to the ship’s cramped hold. Below, Strickland flicks a switch. One Edison bulb stutters to life. The engine’s in back, converted bilges in front. A waist-high railing splits the two areas. Using the bilges to contain the creature is crude, but also genius. Upriver, they’d had to improvise almost everything.

Strickland seizes the girl’s arm to keep her from bolting. This is not the party on a boat she was picturing, not the gringo she signed up for. She’s too frightened to ask for more money, and for a whore, that’s terrified.

Using his left hand, Strickland juggles his pistol out from beneath his linen jacket. All caipirinha confidence, he hears himself saying, _I’ll protect._ Maybe he says _I’ll control._ His Portuguese is slipping, his thoughts a swamp of jungle pidgin, Korean, Russian, the drawl he suppresses. He forces himself to speak without drawl or slur. “Down there. The water. You see it?” With the pistol, he gestures towards the bilges and their dark water.

The girl gasps, but in wonder. She steps up fearlessly. He hears her breathe, “ _Que lindo_ _!”_   Strickland glances in. The creature’s awake. It’s peeking up, eyes only above the water, so it looks like a cute little fishy. The lying devil.

Strickland drags the girl all the way over and bangs on the bilge-tank’s waist-high railing. Suddenly angry, he snarls to her, “You like it, huh? We’ll give it something to see.” All his reflexes are back on duty, enough that it’s the work of seconds to jam the girl against that rail. She wails and jerks back against him. Strickland pins her left hand to the railing with his own, weighed by the pistol. She freezes.

Strickland yanks her dress up. “White panties? Wouldn’t have thought.” He tears those down, enjoys what he sees. With a hard hand between her shoulders, he takes a pace back, bends her over. As she goes down, clasping the railing to stop herself, her updo unravels into a loose ponytail.

The last flower from her hair falls into the water.

Down below them, a chain rattles to life. Water sloshes. There’s a deep marine growl, extended, vibrating, that changes its timbre amidst a shifting gush of water.

The creature arises.

Its progress snares Strickland’s reeling gaze. It stands slowly, raising a breath of brine, of river water meeting the sea. Its colors are primeval. Algae green-black, leaf olive, old-bone ivory. Twilight-blue stripes and those heavy golden eyes. There’s its broadening neck, thick with fins around its collar and chain. Its wide shoulders breach, sending rivulets of stained water streaming over its chest plates. The grace of its waist and loins emerges. It raises two massive finned forearms, each weighed by a manacle, linked by a meter’s chain. The wavering light carves out all its darkness, the lines of fin and muscle, as ferocious shadows.

It lifts its chin, its ageless statue’s face taking in the spectacle before it.

And it utters the piercing, questing moan Strickland had waited to hear before. That _asking_ cry.

For Strickland, the ship’s hold spins. The shackle keys in his pocket brush his scrotum. Away from its home, the creature’s power, the force of the jungle, is muted. At the creature’s call, Strickland still feels urges twine through him like black lianas. To be what he was long ago, a wild boy escaping to a hot forest, reveling in a world that felt like paradise. To touch, to open, to free – the creature or himself?

Urges lost and impossible. Unmanly and sinful. Strickland snarls with resistance, shaking his head. Every muscle tenses as he hardens his heart and mind, once and for all, against his own weakness. Never again.

The girl backs into him, and thank Christ for that. Her hot flesh gives him other desires to fall back on. She turns, finds herself caged in his arms. She throws up a hand between his face and hers, even as she calls, “Help! Help me!”

Strickland places the pistol in her line of sight. His voice is thick, unfamiliar to his own ears. He’s speaking English at last. “Told you, sugar, I got this. Now, spread. Don’t move.” He turns her back around, moves her hands down to the railing, like before, leans her shaking body back over. Her eyes dilate black before they close, submitting. In the water, the creature vibrates with sound, a warning Strickland ignores.

Strickland unzips himself. His prick’s ramrod-stiff already. He presses it against the cleft of the girl’s plush ass and leans forwards, taunting, a rebel bad boy. “Hey, fish head! You want some of this?”

The creature has waded as close as it can. The collar’s chain stops the thing an arm and a half’s length away. Where it’s paused, it roars, aggressive, neck-fins rising around the slave collar. Even as it rattles its bonds, leaning its whole being forwards, its eyes stay on him. Strickland grins, delighting in its unbroken attention.

He nudges the girl’s neck with the pistol. “Show him your tits. Go on.” He peers over her shoulder as she does, pulling down the front of her own dress, veiling her face with her hair. “Hold them up. Pinch. That’s real nice. You see her, down there? This get you going?” The hold is feverishly humid. Strickland’s running with sweat. He casts away his jacket, yanks his shirt open with his free hand. Then, he has an idea.

Strickland fingers the girl from behind, cramming in three digits for a good, deep probe. This is, for him, a close second to straight-up fucking. He loves the sense of working up in there and _taking_ something from a girl. As he does, he makes eye contact with the monster. “Right up in this cooze,” he declares. “That’s where you’d like to be. Isn’t it? Don’t have ‘em like this back in the swamp, do they?” Drawing his hand out, Strickland makes a show of sniffing, then licking his fingers. “Aw, yeah. That’s the good stuff. Grade-A pussy.” If the girl sobs, Strickland can’t hear it over the creature’s renewed snarls.

Strickland knots his sticky fingers into her hair, pulls to bow her head to the railing. Shifting himself, folding his height around her, he forces his cock where his fingers just were. “Fuck. Fuck, that’s good. Tight and hot and filthy wet. What have you got between those slimy legs, anyway? Do you fuck at all?” For all that he feels the girl, he’s not seeing her. He is staring into the creature’s eyes. It’s a different connection than they had before, hot, electric, angry. The thing doesn’t blink, ivory teeth bared as it growls, their ferocity straining towards each other.

Between them, the girl’s insides are compressed with terror. Her cunt, slick in self-defense, makes the same obscene sounds the creature does whenever it moves. As her chest heaves with fear, she convulses, clamping down. Her wet heat and his power and that seething presence combine to make this close to the finest fuck of Strickland’s life. He’s so close to coming, to that first, hardest release. He closes his eyes.

In that blind, pure moment, he hears a tiny snap.

One link of a chain. Breaking.

His eyes fly open as vast, wet hands wrap his ankles, _pull --_

He’s jerked under the railing, into the suffocating water. His dizzy head bangs the base of the bilges, bouncing his whole body up. He surfaces for one breath before the creature tackles him, sinks him again.

It’s the second time Strickland’s felt the length of its Adam-naked body, all slick muscle, against him. They’re close to the same size. In a fight-anything, fuck-anything frenzy, he writhes against the thing’s sealed, neutral crotch. His hard-on sends it back, hissing in revulsion. Strickland manages to breach, spitting water, gasping for air. The creature’s circling him like a shark, snarling like a fueled engine. He dodges it by pure instinct. A strike of its claws, meant for his throat, rips his back instead. Pain opens fire.

He screams and claws for the railings. A lucky kick of his catches it in that bare crotch. Five seconds of its pain lets him swarm out like a drowned rat. Strickland flails, slips, his pistol lost, scrambling for the only thing that’s worked against it: the _bastão de gado_. He finds, grabs. Switched on in his wet hand, the electric prod blazes. He yells at the pain, but it’s his fucking pain, he can use it. He whips around and presses it to the metal railing as the creature, chain-hampered, is clambering after him. There’s an electric crack. The thing shrills, an unworldly _screeeeeee_ , releases the railing. Now Strickland’s the one snarling and closing in as it reels, to smack the tip of the _bastão_ against its metal collar. The creature shrills out more agony, stiffening, as the _bastão_ shorts out, dying in a shower of sparks. There’s a massive splash.

Then, silence.

Strickland is still alive. He’s sick with relief. In the water, the thing is lax, buoyant as a dead fish. Strickland spits blood. “You wanted some too, huh? Shit out of luck.”

For all that, he has to steel himself to get back in briefly, grab the thing's neck chain. He hauls it over to the side, not the back, and wraps it around one of the railings, again and again, giving the thing less length than it needs to climb out. This’ll be easier for tomorrow, anyway. His pistol slides underfoot, suddenly, and he holsters it. There are spare locks. What did that bastard Berdugo expect, that there’s spares? He smacks two of them on the chain. The thing lurches at the click of the second lock. It, too, lives. Strickland backs away. Unlocking them will be somebody else’s problem tomorrow.

Somebody else?

Strickland looks around. The girl is gone. The only sign she’s been there at all is a crushed flower.

He goes to check on the smuggler. He’s passed out, his bitches gone. The girl’s not with him. Strickland snatches one of his shirts and checks the other doors. She’s not in any of the other cabins. Henriquez, the hired captain, has long since abandoned ship. If Strickland asks the heavies – he ordered them to be deaf and blind for a while. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It’s a loose end. She should be killed, fucked again and then killed. But, after that fight for his life, Strickland doesn’t have it in him to hunt again. His hands are shaking so much he can barely shuck his filthy, slashed shirt for the smuggler’s stinking one. He tells himself the girl’s nothing. That he’s proved himself against the creature. That he’s on top.

He whistles the heavies back in. Their hard faces are blind to his disarray, to him. One more crazy, whoring gringo. He limps away.

It fucking pours on the way back to Strickland’s hotel. That means a soaking wet gringo doesn’t attract attention in the lobby. He wants a final capirinha or four, but the bar’s closed. The quiet hallways, with their maroon carpet and polished wood, feel like a dream.

Up in his room, Strickland strips naked. Stares at the duffel bag the hotel has held for him for months. He showers for half an hour, his slashed back blazing in agony, before he opens it. Takes out a pair of shoes and his uniform blues, hangs them in the hall for the hotel’s valet to cope with. This done, he closes his eyes. He segues into the thump and nausea of a hangover without the relief of sleep.

Just a girl. No friend of the others. Whatever she saw doesn’t matter.

When the sun’s risen, Strickland opens the door. His crushed shoes have been revived, his blues impeccably ironed. In the lobby, he submits to a hot-towel shave and a haircut. He shows the barber the picture on his ID, months out of date. Afterwards, he doesn’t match it. There are crisper edges on the hair, enduring lines on his face. _The face of an Englishman_ , his first whore had said. That was what happened when you were away too long. Creeping un-Americanism came and got you, like it or not.

It’s also time to be a half-decent husband again. Strickland trawls the hotel’s gift shop, buys the most expensive jewel there for his wife. He’ll have a word with the medic on board, get his VD shots. His last whore – she’ll be dead of syphilis in two years. And between now and then, nobody will pay her much attention. Except, maybe, to say she’s crazy.

Twelve hundred hours finds Strickland back at the docks, supervising the thing being canned up. He’s feeling canned himself in his uniform blues. Berdugo is there, out of place amongst the crack Navy crew, yet confident as he unlocks chains and chivvies the creature. Scenting Strickland, the thing hisses and expands. All the Navy men step back. Berdugo waves the _bastão_ at it and hails Strickland. “Who’s this? Where’s the hunter, eh?”

Strickland growls, “Want a friend, or want to get paid?”

“You’re taking my _bicho_ away! You better pay me!” Berdugo laughs like he’s never had a hangover in his life. When the monster’s in the canister, he actually talks to it, tapping on the canister's glass. “Good luck in America, _amigo_. Get yourself a movie star girlfriend!” Strickland finds he’s coiled his hands, automatically, to fists.

Berdugo's been distracting it while others close the canister. When its metal cap is slammed shut, the clang is like a physical blow to Strickland’s aching head. That’s not the end. Inside, the monster roars. The canister rocks as it bashes the sides. It’s doing its worst in there, with the howl of a betrayed soul in hell. Berdugo sways on his feet, like a man who’s awoken from a dream. His bleary eyes blink and go hollow.

Strickland draws them back to the smuggler’s sweat-fetid cabin. He ignores Berdugo's late attack of conscience, his rambling stream of instructions and regrets. Strickland counts out cash, the final payment. Offers Berdugo his flask once more. The smuggler drinks like he, too, wants to forget. It takes a quarter of a minute for the poison to kick in. The cyanide capsules Strickland didn’t need for himself, with mission accomplished, had this use. For this man, too, knows too much.

He leaves the flask at the dead smuggler’s side, the local currency in the smuggler’s pocket. It’s not real money.

The Navy cruiser is alongside the listing riverboat. Strickland watches the canister hoisted by the deck crane, slid into the ship’s service door, consumed. The thing’s part of the American military machine now. It’s moved up in the world: extracted as an Asset.

The Asset hadn’t pulled the girl into the water. Hadn’t laid a hand on her at all.

From the cruiser’s deck, he watches as the murky Brazil coast recedes. Its shrieking forests and stinking beaches and people with hate and fear for him, all the real Brazilians, left behind.

Just a girl. Escaped because of the Asset.

The chances of anything like that happening again were zero.

Down in his officer’s cabin, Strickland unwraps his fifth lime candy of the day. There it is, the sweet and the lime and the crunch, with his head left clear. Not the past he’s reaching for, but close enough.

He unwraps something else, too. It’s perfect, superior in every way. Made in Texas. Trust America. Strickland reads the scrap of typescript packed with it, HEAVY DUTY CATTLE PROD – INSTRUCTIONS. He loads in the dense, glossy batteries. Presses its switch with its thumb once.

The thick black rod comes to life. Power crackles at arm’s length.

Strickland feels sane for the first time in weeks.

And he descends to the ship's depths, where the Asset lurks, to start over again.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to beta reader Vulgarweed, especially for help with Brazilian atmosphere and the use of Portuguese here! And more thanks to all the readers giving this darker story a try, whether for the action or the Asset, the character study or the transgression.
> 
> Some terms for you:  
>  _Bastão de gado_ \- 'goad for the cattle,' used here as it is in Brazil to refer to an electric cattle prod.  
>  _A Panhandle cracker_ \- A white person from the area of Florida called the Panhandle, right below Alabama.  
>  _Bicho_ \- As noted, a word of many meanings: bug, animal, human being/"this guy", also used in Brazil to refer to a gay man.  
>  _Porque la jangada?_ \- 'Why the cheap boat?' used here to mean someone low-class, easily available.  
>  _miga_ \- Literally, 'breadcrumb', used here in the slang sense of 'hey girl, li'l cutie.'  
>  _Que lindo_ \- How beautiful/handsome!


End file.
